For nearly a year, a former friend of Ryan Braun who sued the Milwaukee Brewers star for defamation has hung in the legal batter's box, fouling off defense motions and a judge's warnings about how he was handling his own case.

Now Ralph Sasson has finally struck out; a judge on Wednesday dismissed his case with prejudice as a sanction for the plaintiff's "egregious" and persistent misconduct in the litigation.

Sasson sued last summer. He claimed to have helped Braun - his childhood and college friend - defend claims that he had violated Major League Baseball's doping rules, and was later shorted money owed for his help and defamed by Braun.

From the start, Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Paul Van Grunsven had given Sasson, who says he is a student at an online law school, lots of leeway as a non-lawyer representing himself. But Sasson's recent disclosure, to a Major League Baseball Players Association official of information from a sealed deposition of Braun's agent, was apparently the last straw that crumbled the judge's patience.

In a detailed, 15 page order issued Wednesday, Van Grunsven granted defense motions to dismiss the case as a sanction. The order recounts the history of Sasson's sometimes over-the-top demeanor and questionable legal strategy throughout the case.

That after Sasson - an obviously very smart but pugnacious guy - had surprised veteran counsel for the defense by managing to persuade Van Grunsven to preserve at least some of his suit after initial efforts to have the whole thing thrown out.

But, according to Van Grunsven's order, Sasson continued to file discovery requests for irrelevant information meant to embarrass or prejudice Braun and his agent, Nez Balelo. In January, the judge ordered all future filings be under seal, but Sasson still filed some publicly.

When Sasson deposed Balelo in March, the judge ordered that it be done in his chambers, and with extra assurance that it be sealed and confidential even beyond the general sealing order.

Yet in May, Sasson wrote the general counsel of the players association, suggesting that in his deposition, Balelo had essentially admitted to misconduct in sharing certain confidential materials with Sasson during Braun's drug case.

At a hearing last week, Sasson tried to argue that what he was doing was merely informal discovery that was not subject to Van Grunsven's seal order. Sasson argued the seal order only prevented dissemination of the actual deposition transcript, and that only a "gag order" would have prevented Sasson from talking to others about things he learned from the case.

The judge found it was not a violation of his stay on discovery, but did violate the seal order.

Sasson had also written, in a letter to the court, that MLB officials were interested in mediating his dispute with Braun, a claim Van Grunsven found "unsubstantiated and incredible."

Van Grunsven's order also recounts Sasson's "lack of professionalism" throughout the case, and recounts examples of when Sasson referred to other lawyers as "cupcake," and "dude," and used profanity during his own deposition, even though he himself had earlier sought sanctions against an attorney for Balelo because he used an expletive in the hallway.

"Sasson's unjustifiable behavior threatens the integrity of the jusicial process," Van Grunsven wrote, "and therefore warrants the most severe sanction available - dismissal of this case with prejudice."

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